Foreclosure activity in October goes up in Ventura County

Foreclosure activity in Ventura County increased in October, and the number of default notices, the first step in the foreclosure process, rose from a year earlier.

Those trends contrast with national and state patterns, which show foreclosure activity below that of October 2010, according to Irvine-based RealtyTrac.

"Notices of default for all of Ventura County are up 16 percent from a year ago," said RealtyTrac spokesperson Daren Blomquist. "That does stand out because in other areas, we're not seeing that yet."

Foreclosure filings, including default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions, were reported on 1,203 Ventura County properties in October, up from 1,004 in September. In October 2010, filings were reported on 1,314 properties.

Looking at overall activity by ZIP code, RealtyTrac reports that in Thousand Oaks 91360, foreclosure activity grew 52.5 percent in October and was up 35.5 percent from October 2010.

Foreclosure activity jumped 75 percent in Oak Park from September and 40 percent from a year earlier.

There also were double-digit increases in foreclosures in Ventura ZIP codes and in Fillmore and Ojai.

Kirk Lesh, senior economist at the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting at California Lutheran University, said the numbers shock him and probably indicate banks have stepped up their foreclosure processing in the county.

"I thought numbers would be going up, but I didn't think it would be this bad," he said. "What concerns me most is that the numbers are up from last year.

"Even Westlake Village is up over last year, and Thousand Oaks is just getting hit, but it tells you, too, how rough things are. The economy just isn't improving fast enough to help people out."

Nationally and at the state level, foreclosure activity rose in October, but the number of filings fell from October 2010.

Foreclosure filings in the U.S. were up just over 7 percent in October compared with September, with activity reported on 230,678 U.S. properties, or one in every 563 U.S. housing units.

In California, the month-over-month increase was just under 7 percent, for an October foreclosure filing rate of one in every 243 housing units.

However, the U.S. numbers were down nearly 31 percent from October 2010. In California, the number of properties in the foreclosure process was down nearly 17 percent from a year earlier.

That trend was reflected in the statistics for Oxnard and Simi Valley.

Oxnard 93003 saw a 50 percent jump in foreclosure activity in October, although activity there and in other Oxnard ZIP codes was down from a year earlier. The same picture emerged in Simi Valley, with jumps in activity month over month but at levels below those of October 2010.

While the picture is gloomy, Blomquist says, he thinks most parts of California, including Ventura County, are past the worst in terms of foreclosures.

"We will continue to see some elevated numbers as the lenders play catch-up, but we don't expect to see a huge flood of new foreclosures," he said. "There is still a lot of distress in the market, and it's going to take a couple of years for Ventura County to get back to normal."

But some factors still could hurt the outlook for the real estate market, Blomquist said.

"The big wild cards are if the economy gets worse and if a lot of homeowners who are 'underwater' decide to start walking away from their homes in bigger numbers, but that's a more pessimistic scenario," he said.

The five states with the highest foreclosure rates in October — Nevada, California, Arizona, Florida and Michigan — accounted for 53 percent of the national total.

Nevada posted the nation's highest state foreclosure rate for the 58th straight month. One in every 180 Nevada housing units had a foreclosure filing during October — more than three times the national average despite a drop-off in activity.

California default notices rose 17 percent from the previous month to a 13-month high, helping the state post the nation's second-highest foreclosure rate.

Stockton tops the metro foreclosure rate with foreclosure filings reported on one in every 143 housing units. New defaults in Stockton rose 20 percent from the past month and 9 percent from October 2010. Five other California metro areas had foreclosure rates that ranked among the Top 10 in October. Modesto was No. 2 behind Stockton and followed by Vallejo-Fairfield, No. 3; Riverside-San Bernardino, No. 4; Sacramento, No. 7; and Merced, No. 9.